Well we do. Because NO ONE rolls out of bed in the morning looking like this, despite what movies and tv shows will have you believe. Not even supermodels.

In fact, supermodels have a whole team of people who make sure they look that good whenever there could be a camera around. Which is why it’s so crazily amusing to Google pictures of celebrities without makeup. Seriously. Miranda Kerr looks like Gollum when she’s not wearing makeup. Which I guess makes sense, since her husband, Orlando Bloom was IN those movies. But still.

No, it takes work to look like this. Let’s start with the hair. Everyone knows that long hair is super sexy. But do you know how much work long hair takes to maintain? I, for example, have a jewfro. But you wouldn’t know that without me telling you because I’ve spent countless hours and huge sums of money taming it. On average, it takes me over two hours to blowdry and flatiron my hair to get it to be perfectly straight but with JUST the right amount of volume as well. That’s two hours that I could be spending sleeping, writing my next novel, learning a new language, or just generally having a life.

And sticking on the subject of pesky follicles: body hair. Hot girls can’t have any. So I shave my legs every single day. Yes, even in winter. That’s another 15 minutes earlier that I have to get up in the morning. And I don’t care what anyone tells you, waxing sucks. Men, unless you have had all of the hair ripped out of your nether regions by a small Asian woman wielding hot wax on a tongue depressor, don’t even start with me. I know how much you whine when your girlfriend plucks your unibrow, but trust me, that’s nothing compared to the pain that the Brazilians have inflicted upon women.

And no one likes their women to be too pale, so tanning is necessary. But tanning causes cancer. And, in extreme cases, Jersey-Shore-ism, a horrible disease where you turn completely orange and your entire face peels off, Pauly-D style. So we come upon yet another hot girl problem—avoiding being too pale without looking like you work for Willy Wonka or getting cancer. Marilyn was wrong—diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend. Bronzer is.

On second thought, no.

Diamonds are still a girl’s best friend. Bronzer just helps her make those friends.

Which brings us to makeup. Yes, I love makeup. But I’m pretty sure I spend more annually at Sephora and Ulta than the running budget of a moderately-sized first world country. I wouldn’t quite go as big as France, but definitely significantly more than it takes to run Portugal or England.

But Sara, that’s crazy!

No, it’s just another hot girl problem.

The trick, however, is to use enough makeup to make it look like you’re not wearing any. So in addition to being master depilators, hot girls have to be artists, and in some cases, magicians. Because we’re also hiding the fact that we get MUCH less sleep than the average-looking members of the population due to all the time it takes to look as good as we do. But, if you use too much makeup, the hotness factor is negated. That’s why they gave all the Jersey Shore girls (except Deena, whom no one anywhere would EVER confuse with a hot girl, even with the thickest beer goggles on the planet) make-UNDERS.

But making sure that we look our best at all times isn’t the only source of hot girl problems.

Oh no.

There are also huge misconceptions about hot girls that we have to fight each and every day.

For example, contrary to popular belief, a woman’s intelligence cannot be calculated as inversely proportional to her breast size. If that formula worked, you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now because I would be too busy running around with a pot on my head, letting my teeny, tiny pea-sized brain rattle all around in the big empty wasteland above my shoulders to write it. Sorry fellas.

And a lot of people think that if a girl is hot, she’s automatically a bitch—well—oh okay, that one is usually true.

But the one about how we never have to buy ourselves a drink, that one is totally—hmm… well I guess that’s true too.

Come to think of it, I guess I should stop complaining. Being a hot girl does have plenty of advantages that just about outweigh the amount of time and energy that it takes to look this good.

And I’m sure the rest of the population has their problems too.

Like earning enough money to pay for all of our drinks.

(And for anyone who didn’t figure it out, this entire post was satirical and I’m really not a stuck up, horrible person who goes around telling everyone how hot I am. But my hair DOES take two hours to dry and straighten. So please go buy my books so I can afford to get it Brazilian straightened again and fight the ‘fro when the weather gets warmer! Otherwise, you might just be its next victim!*)

*Not a threat because I have zero control over who the jewfro attacks. It could be you. It could be someone in Paraguay. It could be anyone. But if my books sell well enough, I’ll earn enough money to keep it tame for a few more months and humanity will be safe again.

And a shoe-aholic. But Shoe Addicts Anonymous meets on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, so today it’s time to address my other raging addiction.

I’ve been addicted to makeup for as long as I can remember. It probably started with my mother, who is also a makeup-aholic. Although she doesn’t seem to think it’s a problem, so I grew up thinking it was normal to be obsessed with makeup.

As a child, the most exciting day of the year wasn’t my birthday, which was just another day because I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup. No, it was Halloween, when I could wear as much makeup as I wanted. And that’s the entire reason why I enjoyed ballet as a little girl: I got to wear makeup for the recitals. (And a tutu, which of course, as the girliest girl on the planet, I would have lived in from age two to age fourteen if I could have. To be honest, if it was socially acceptable, I’d probably still wear a tutu. But, in one of the great tragedies of my life, it’s not.)

Of course, when I got a little older and saw the pictures of myself for Halloween and ballet recitals, I understand why I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup regularly until high school, because I looked like a prostitute in training. And bright blue eyeshadow isn’t a particularly good look on anyone, especially not an eight year old in a tutu.

Now, as an adult, it’s not even that I wear THAT much makeup on a daily basis. My entire makeup routine from start to finish takes less than ten minutes and, when I’m running late (which, let’s face it, when am I NOT running late?), can take far less time than that.

And because I have Rosie, I’ve even been known to leave the house without makeup to walk her (which horrifies my mother). Granted, I don’t walk her further than ten feet away from my building when I have no makeup on, and now that I’ve discovered that a couple of seriously cute single guys live in my building, I’m less likely to walk her without makeup when it’s not 5am. But I AM capable of leaving my house without makeup, which a few years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to say.

Baby steps, but steps all the same.

So what’s the problem?

Ulta and Sephora.

No, those aren’t weirdo new names for children or (because I have no children) my boobs. They’re the two leading makeup stores. And they (along with shoes and Springsteen concerts) are why I might lose my house in the near future.

Because I am physically incapable of passing either store without going in and spending at least $100. Literally. If I walk into a mall and pass Sephora twice, I have to go in both times and buy things both times. That’s not normal.

I can’t explain it either. I DO know, on a practical level, that I don’t NEED every shade of Urban Decay’s liquid glitter eyeliner. I do. But I was SO upset the one time that I wore my one outfit that had some gold in it (because I’m the only Jew on the planet who’s allergic to gold jewelry. Seriously. I don’t know how that happened) and I didn’t have the glitter eyeliner that would have looked perfect with that dress.

Literally. I wound up dashing out to Ulta in my gold outfit and getting there 30 seconds before they closed and BEGGING them to let me in to buy the one eyeliner that I didn’t have because it was the ONLY thing that could complete my outfit. Which they did, because I am single handedly keeping them in business. And since then, guess how many times I’ve worn that gold glitter eyeliner?

If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly. But I have it. Just in case.

I also have the same eyeliner in magenta, fuchsia, mauve, teal, aqua, purple, light blue, royal blue, navy blue, green, forest green, olive green, blue-green, and green-blue, all of which are JUST different enough to convince me that I need to spend the $17 each on them to complete the collection.

Do you see what I mean? I need help.

Every once in awhile (usually when my linen closet, which in my case is actually a cosmetic closet, explodes and spews old makeup volcano-style sixty feet in the air and shuts down all of the airports over the entire eastern seaboard), I decide to throw out the makeup that I haven’t worn in years. Which, to the untrained observer would seem to be a step in the right direction.

But my fellow makeup-aholics know where I’m going with this.

Because then I have room for all of the exciting NEW makeup that I swear cosmetic companies put out just for me.

It’s actually gotten to the point where one of the employees at my local Ulta tries to help me, because he knows that I can’t afford to keep buying makeup at my current rate. So when I go to check out, he holds up everything I’ve brought to the counter and asks me, “Do you NEED this? Or do you just WANT it?” and if I can’t justify why I actually need it, he makes me put it back.

Which means that I go to extraordinary lengths to avoid going to his register. To the point where I’ll call the store to find out his work schedule, then go in when I know he won’t be there.

They say the first step toward recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Which I suppose means that I’m on my way. But the real point of this blog post isn’t to explain my problem or recover.

It’s to tell you that if you’re looking for a holiday present for me and you’re not buying me shoes, the next best thing you can get me is a Sephora or Ulta gift card and Curtis’ work schedule for the Ulta in Rockville.

Because makeup may not make the world a prettier place. But only because not everyone wears it.

And it makes me happy. And in the end, isn’t making me happy what the holidays are REALLY about?

Meta

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